Along an assembly line, various types of articles, such as diapers and other absorbent articles, may be assembled by adding components to and/or otherwise modifying an advancing, continuous web of material. For example, in some processes, advancing webs of material are combined with other advancing webs of material. In other examples, individual components created from advancing webs of material are combined with advancing webs of material, which in turn, are then combined with other advancing webs of material. In some cases, individual components created from advancing web or webs are combined with other individual components created from other advancing web or webs. Webs of material and component parts used to manufacture diapers may include: backsheets, topsheets, leg cuffs, waist bands, absorbent core components, front and/or back ears, fastening components, and various types of elastic webs and components such as leg elastics, barrier leg cuff elastics, stretch side panels, and waist elastics. Once the desired component parts are assembled, the advancing web(s) and component parts are subjected to a final knife cut to separate the web(s) into discrete diapers or other absorbent articles.
In some processes, a continuous length of diaper assemblies advancing in a machine direction is cut into discrete assemblies and combined with continuous lengths of elastically extendable front and back waistband webs advancing in a machine direction. In some processes, the continuous length of diaper assemblies may advance to a rotary cutting apparatus. Sometimes, the continuous length of diaper assemblies may undesirably break as the diaper assemblies advance in the machine direction toward the rotary cutting apparatus. As a result, the continuous length of diaper assemblies may jam and/or wrap around equipment. The converting line may need to be shut down in order to remove jams and/or wraps of diaper assemblies and to rethread the continuous diaper assemblies, while bypassing the rotary cutting apparatus. In some processes, when the converting line is turned back on, the continuous length of diaper assemblies is hand-pulled from the converting line until the continuous length of diaper assemblies reach a desired quality. Once the continuous length of diaper assemblies reaches a desired quality, the line may be shut down again in order to rethread the continuous length of diaper assemblies through the rotary cutting apparatus. The converting line may then be restarted. Once the converting line is restarted, it may take several minutes for the continuous length of diaper assemblies to reach a desired quality. The process of shutting down a converting apparatus, rethreading the continuous length of diaper assemblies, and restarting the converting apparatus can take away from production time.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a process and apparatus for reduces the number of shut downs required to restart a converting apparatus.